Wake Up! Productions wrote:
Canada Lands Surveys Act http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts ... ml#docCont
24. (1) In this Part, “Canada Lands” means
(a) any lands belonging to Her Majesty in right of Canada or of which the Government of Canada has power to dispose that are situated in Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut and any lands that are ...
I can only assume that the term "belonging to" is synonymous with "owned".
I hope this helps.
I'm not sure that it does. Besides that law simply authorizing public land surveys (rather than directly defining anything to do with ownership), the term "belonging to" isn't necessarily synonymous with ownership, but can also indicate membership: Ronald Roe belongs to the Andiron Party. Or, rightful possession, which isn't quite ownership: That ballot belongs to Mr. Roe.
My very weak understanding of property law (which is based entirely on
Wikipedia, to indicate how weak it is) is that the original concept was of the monarch ultimately owning all of the land. All other property interests were subordinate to that, and among other fun effects, this led directly into the notion of "eminent domain," i.e., if the King wants the land back, he gets it back. And, of course, nobody owns the monarch, so there you go.
I would assume that, at least theoretically, this is still the case in Canada. Since a lot of this idea is based on feudalism, and since feudalism has fallen sharply out of fashion in the last dozen years or more, it's a very attenuated interest, but at its root is still there. In the US, by contrast, we ejected the monarch, who is therefore not a factor; nevertheless, some elements of the old system remain in the background: eminent domain, for example, along with seizure of land for delinquent property tax, and maybe some other indications of a title superior to any occupant's. Still, you have people trading land freely amongst themselves, without getting permission from the monarch first (or indeed any requirement to do so), and for most practical purposes that's probably enough to say they own it. Add to that the right not to be deprived of the enjoyment of property except by due process of law, and the monarch's interest gets somewhat more attenuated, though not completely eliminated.
So in other words, Canada is practically owned by lots and lots of Canadians (among others), individually. Their interests are subordinate to that of Queen Elizabeth II, who's delegated most of the heavy lifting to the Parliament of Canada, who in turn have delegated some of the messier work to the provincial governments; however, the ability of the Queen
et al. to exercise that interest is constrained by law and modern sensibilities.
To Grixit's point, upthread, you, individually, own a share of the country (as a whole) to the same extent that you own a share of the Queen, which is to say that you don't, and never had. The idea that you do is probably tied in with the whole, "the government is a corporate fiction!" line of thinking, which we've discussed elsewhere, I'm sure. However, you, as a member of the public, have the right to petition your government to do things with property (in the name of the Queen, and using her interest), usually for the benefit of the whole society, usually for things like building highways and railways, and power transmission lines, and so on. And the government has that right, within limits, even though it doesn't have an interest in the land that we'd call ownership.
) The natural person is "Her Majesty the Queen of Canada" who has delegated certain (basicly all) of the powers and privileges of the state, the corporate Majesty in right of Canada, to various legal entities and persons.
